It’s a familiar story, set long in the future where humans have abandoned Earth having ruined the planet through development and war. A new home was found on the planet Evath, which had two moons Mitral, where the game takes place, and Tricuspid, where Driller’s sequal, Dark Side, is set. As the life on Evath evolved the same problems of human society emerged and Evath’s rulers, the original colonists kown as the Elders, formed an army to enforce the law. However, the power of the Elders weakend over generations and Evath plunged into conflict.
The Elders settled this with one final campaign that established martial law, dishing out the death penalty to any criminals that were caught.
A peaceful period followed and banishment from the planet was used as an alternative to the death penalty. These criminals were nicknamed "Ketars" and formed their own colony on Mitral, one of Evath's moons. As you’d expect, this was not a pleasant place. The initial anarchy gave way to a hierarchy where the strong reigned over the weak. It was a paranoid society and an intricate system of security devices was installed to protect Mitral.
The energy for both colonies, Evath and Mitral, was obtained from rubicon crystals. Initially, Evath mined these crystals from it’s moons. In fact, the ‘surface’ of Mitral was made up of artificial
platforms constructed around the moon to provide bases for the mining activities. These became redundant soon after colonisation of Evath when scientists discovered how to manufacture the crystals. However, when the Ketars were banished to Mitral, they continued to mine the rubicon crystals unchecked to the point that the moon became unstable, causing regular earthquakes and explosions.
The Ketars, having failed in their attempt to release the catastrophic gas buid-up that their mining had generated, were forced to evacuate the planet to an uninhabited continent on Evath, hoping to evade detection in the process. Ever paranoid however, they set all of their security systems to attack anyone who approached after they had left.
This is the world that the player enters as the character Lesleigh Skerrit. A child prodigy who aspired to work for the Driller Federation, he was wrongly accused of murder and was banished to Mitral. Only later was his innocence proven allowing him to return to Evath to finally work for the Drillers.
Evath’s intelligence services knew of the Ketars activities and estimated that Mitral was so unstable that it would explode within two weeks, destroying Evath with it. Step up Lesleigh Skerrit. Given his intelligence and knowledge of Mitral he is the ideal candidate to go to Mitral once more and avert impending doom. His mission is to use an excavation probe to place 18 drilling rigs around Mitral, one on each surface, to allow the gas to dissipate harmlessly and prevent the explosion. The only problem? Evading the security systems that were activated prior to the Ketars' departure.
He is offered / bribed with his life’s goal of becoming and Elite Driller and, of course, jumps at the chance.
The game requires the player to maneuver the excavation probe across the eighteen regions (platforms) of Mitral, and place a drilling rig on each of them to allow a minimum of 50% of the gas to escape. The position is established by a mixture of clues from the landscape (including an "X marks the spot" in the first zone) and trial and error. The security systems attack on sight, so they have to be avoided or disabled. Some can be shot, others have to deactivated by finding various switches.
The probe can only travel across the eighteen platforms so you have to be carful not to fall off some of the edges. This is where the 3D model is useful – if you can imagine 18 squares joined together around a sphere, not all surfaces are connected (8 triangles would be required for a complete surface) and the probe will be marooned if you fall into these areas.
The trial and error element made the game fairly time consuming, though it was quite absorbing, so I would recommend giving it a go.
